Test Site installation not working.

Hi Will,

Hmm, so you copied the contents of wp-content from a 3.6.1 version of WordPress over the contents of your newly installed WordPress 4.1’s wp-content folder, right?

And now when you point your browser to the home page of your WordPress 4.1 site it prompts you to go through the installation script again, right?

If both of the above are true, might I suggest starting over. But this time rather than one big copy, copy over the plugins and retest. Then the themes and retest, etc. This way you’ll have a better way of knowing what is causing your issue.

Hope this helps!

Randy

Randy,
It does in the sense that it helps me understand the problem. What I really would like to do is just make a copy of the site from the web and put it on my hard drive. Then once that is up and running I can update wordpress from there. I just haven’t found the instructions for that particular process.

What would happen if I just copied the whole thing to my hard drive?

Thank you,
Will

Hi Will,

Just to keep the record straight, I just tested using MAMP as my server base:

1. Install fresh WordPress 4.1
2. Install fresh WordPress 3.6.1
3. Copy/replace wp-contents from WordPress 3.6.1 to WordPress 4.1
4. Go to home page of WordPress 4.1
–> problem!

Got a White Screen of Death. Had to go to /wp-admin, log in, then go to Appearance > Themes where Twenty Fifteen theme was “active” but not really there. And the system rightly stated “ERROR: The theme directory ‘twentyfifteen’ does not exist.” So I activated Twenty Thirteen and all was good.

Thus, do make sure not to delete any current fils and only add files such as extra themes, plugins, and whatnots when dealing with the wp-contents folder. ??

And to answer your question about making a local copy of your WordPress site, I believe this link may be more than useful:

https://codex.www.ads-software.com/Running_a_Development_Copy_of_WordPress

Then once that is up and running I can update wordpress from there.

What is it that you are trying to do? Your local installation won’t be connected to your site that’s on a server.

P.S., I retested the above mentioned steps but this time instead of replacing all the 4.1 wp-contents with 3.6.1 wp-contents I selectively only copied over what was missing — in my case it was the Twenty Twelve theme. Being that I am testing with two fresh installs of WordPress. And, as can be expected, everything worked fine. Meaning I was able to go to my WordPress 4.1 site, see its homepage, etc.

The moral of the story here being make sure when copying over items from one WordPress build to another that you a) add missing files and b) only replace older files. Which, in the case of copying from WordPress 3.6.1 to WordPress 4.1 the latter would be a rarity! ??

I think Will is wanting to create a development copy of his site locally with the idea that he can a) change it locally, b) test it locally, then c) push the changes back to the live site. Is this correct Will???

Randy,

Thanks. The link you posted helped me move forward. I’m going to set up a subdomain and go from there.

Thank you,
Will

Yes, that was the idea Randy. But after doing more searching and going to your link I realized the subdomain route might be best.

You’re very welcome Will. And yes, we too like to use subdomains (e.g., dev.mysite.com) for development sites. This way, if possible, all dev work is done on the same web host server setup making dev/testing an apples for apples kind of thing. ??